The eyes don't have it: an empirical comparison of head-based and eye-based selection in virtual reality

We present a study comparing selection performance between three eye/head interaction techniques using the recently released FOVE head-mounted display (HMD). The FOVE offers an integrated eye tracker, which we use as an alternative to potentially fatiguing and uncomfortable head-based selection used with other commercial devices. Our experiment was modelled after the ISO 9241-9 reciprocal selection task, with targets presented at varying depths in a custom virtual environment. We compared eye-based selection, and head-based selection (i.e., gaze direction) in isolation, and a third condition which used both eye-tracking and head-tracking at once. Results indicate that eye-only selection offered the worst performance in terms of error rate, selection times, and throughput. Head-only selection offered significantly better performance.

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